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Retired US Air Force, B52 Tail Gunner. When I retired I was running the Photo Lab at the U.S. Air Force Academy. Upon leaving the Air Force I worked as a Photographer for the Governor of Texas for 5 years. Retired as the Photographer of Fine Art at the Blanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas.

It's a list of all the jobs that I held from the time I started working outside of chores around the house and such. It starts when I was 12 years old and got my social security number. Folks back then didn't automatically get a social security number.

1948: Pin setter at a bowling alley before they had auto pin-setters.

Grocery store checkout bagger and take out help. Before supermarkets.

Theater usher, back when they still used flashlights to guide people to their seats once the lights went out.

1951 (November): Minnesota Army National Guard when I was 15 years old.

Jan 1954: USAF basic training. Had 2 years 2 months and 2 days of Army National Guard upon entering the Air Force.

April 1954: USAF basic electronics school immediately followed by radar school. 9 months of 6 hours a day 5 days a week schooling.

Jan 1955: USAF Radar mechanic on flight line at Bergstrom AFB, Tx.

June 1956: Production Control person in the 12th Armament & Electronics Squadron at Bergstrom AFB, Tx.

August 1957: Production Control person in the Armament & Electronics Squadron at Chennault AFB, La. (Lake Charles, La.)

May 1963: Production Control person in the 568th Strategic Missile Squadron at Larson AFB, Tx. (Moses Lake, Wa.)

Jan 1965: B52 Tail Gunner in the 568th Strategic Bomb Wing at Bergstrom AFB, Tx.

Sept 1966: B52 Tail Gunner in the 568th Strategic Bomb Wing at March AFB, Ca. w/three 6 months tours supporting the Vietnam war.

August 1969: Photography trainee 15th Air Force Reconnaissance Technical Squadron at March AFB, Ca.

August 1970: Photographic Lab supervisor at the 15th Air Force Reconnaissance Technical Squadron at March AFB, Ca.

Sept 1971: Master level color photo processes technical training at Lowery AFB, Denver, Colo.

Nov 1971: Major command production control supervisor at the USAF Academy, Colo. (Photographic Division)

Jan 1974: Retired from the USAF after twenty years active duty.

Feb 1974: Photo Processors Company (owned by the LBJ family), Austin, Tx.

Apr 1974: Photographer for the Governors Office of the State of Texas. Got the job through the Texas Unemployment commission.

Feb 1979: Third person fired from the Governors Officer after a Republican took over.

June 1979: Inside mechanic at the A.B. Dick company. (Invented the mimeograph) Had small offset printing presses, mechanical computers, and of course mimeographs and spirit processors.

Jan 1980: After having my application in the UT system since Feb 1979 they called me to do an interview for the position of Photographer for the then Archer M. Huntington Art Galley., and I was hired.

Even tho it was at reduced pay from what I had been making at the Governors office but it was a whole lot more than I was making at A.B. Dick!
I was told a few years later that they had interviewed folks with Masters degrees from UT in Fine Arts Photography. But, my special love in the Air force was in the copy room, worked out fine, didn't it. I worked there for 18 years and it opened up a whole other world for me. Even though I wasn't going to school, there I did learn some of the opposite of what I had learned in the service.

Feb 1998: Retired from the University of Texas to "do my own thing!"

FOOTNOTE:

During my time at the Museum I found out that I could "buy" back some of my military time. (One nice way the the State of Texas repays it's vets.) They even let you do it by making payments monthly auto deducted. I bought back the total allowed of five years. So that brought the years for retirement purposes to 23 years, up from 18 years.
But wait, there is still more about my final retirement pay. The State of Texas allowed one to retire under the Employees Retirement System (E.R.S.) if one had a total of five years. I guess that's called vested, no? So they transferred my 23 years to the five that I had from the Governors Office. Which made a total of 28 years for a Texas State retirement plan.
Wait, it gets even better. Retiring out of the University would have been under their system whose formula was different from the states. It also would only count the year I retired in as a partial because of semesters or something like that. So by retiring under the E.R.S. I gained the year I retired in as a year form pay as well as an extra .5 % in the formula. Not bad for a boy from Two Harbors who didn't plan any of it.


So to sum it up in one extended sentence, I was a pin-setter, grocery clerk, usher, weekend warrior, Fighter radar mechanic, production controller, a B52 tail gunner w/113 combat missions, photographer at the USAF Academy, the Texas Governors office, and still am one in retirement.

The only thing I forgot was the three summers during High School time that I was a farmer on my cousin Audrey's husband farm by Lake Woebegone.

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